To know the mighty works of God;
to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate, in
degree, the
wonderful working of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and
acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance can not
be more
grateful than knowledge.

 Copernicus

COPERNICUS

hen
a prominent member of Congress, of slightly convivial turn, went to
sleep on the floor of the House of Representatives and suddenly
awakening,
convulsed the assemblage by demanding in a loud voice, "Where am I
at?" he propounded an inquiry that is indisputably a classic.

With
the very first glimmering of
intelligence, and as far back as history goes, man has always asked
that
question, also three others:

Where
am I?

Who
am I?

What
am I here for?

Where
am I going?

A
question implies an answer and
so, coeval with the questioner, we find a class of Volunteers springing
into
being, who have taken upon themselves the business of answering the
interrogations.

And
as partial payment for
answering these questions, the man who answered has exacted a living
from the
man who asked, also titles, honors, gauds, jewels and obsequies.

Further
than this, the Volunteer
who answered has declared himself exempt from all useful labor. This
Volunteer
is our theologian.

Walt
Whitman has said:

I
think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contained,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania
of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

But we should note this fact:
Whitman merely wanted to live with animals  he did not desire to
become one.
He wasn't willing to forfeit knowledge; and a part of that knowledge
was that
man has some things yet to learn from the patient brute. Much of man's
misery
has come from his persistent questioning.

The
book of Genesis is certainly right
when it tells us that man's troubles came from a desire to know. The
fruit of
the tree of knowledge is bitter, and man's digestive apparatus is
ill-conditioned to digest it. But still we are grateful, and good men
never
forget that it was woman who gave the fruit to man  men learn nothing
alone.
In the Garden of Eden, with everything supplied, man was an animal, but
when he
was turned out and had to work, strive, struggle and suffer, he began
to grow.

The
Volunteers of the Far East
have told us that man's deliverance from the evils of life must come
through
killing desire; we will reach Nirvana  rest  through nothingness. But
within
a decade it has been borne in upon a vast number of the thinking men of
the
world that deliverance from sorrow and discontent was to be had not
through
ceasing to ask questions, but by asking one question more. The question
is
this, "What can I do?"

When
man went to work, action
removed the doubt that theory could not solve.

The
rushing winds purify the air;
only running water is pure; and the holy man, if there be such, is the
one who
loses himself in persistent, useful effort. By working for all, we
secure the
best results for self, and when we truly work for self, we work for all.

In
that thoughtful essay by
Brooks Adams, "The Law of Civilization and Decay," the author says,
"Thought is one of the manifestations of human energy, and among the
earlier and simpler phases of thought, two stand conspicuous  Fear and
Greed:
Fear, which, by stimulating the imagination, creates a belief in an
invisible
world, and ultimately develops a priesthood."

The
priestly class evolves
naturally into being everywhere as man awakens and asks questions.
"Only
the Unknown is terrible," says Victor Hugo. We can cope with the known,
and at the worst we can overcome the unknown by accepting it.
Verestchagin, the
great painter who knew the psychology of war as few have known, and
went down
to his death gloriously, as he should, on a sinking battleship, once
said,
"In modern warfare, when man does not see his enemy, the poetry of the
battle is gone, and man is rendered by the Unknown into a quaking
coward."

But
when enveloped in the fog of
ignorance every phenomenon of Nature causes man to quake and tremble 
he wants
to know! Fear prompts him to ask, and Greed  greed for power, place
and pelf 
answers.

To
succeed beyond the average is
to realize a weakness in humanity and then bank on it. The priest who
pacifies
is as natural as the fear he seeks to assuage  as natural as man
himself.

So
first, man is in bondage to
his fear, and this bondage he exchanges for bondage to a priest. First,
he
fears the unknown; second, he fears the priest who has power with the
unknown.

Soon
the priest becomes a slave
to the answers he has conjured forth. He grows to believe what he at
first
pretended to know. The punishment of every liar is that he eventually
believes
his lies. The mind of man becomes tinted and subdued to what he works
in, like
the dyer's hand.

So
we have the formula: Man in
bondage to fear. Man in bondage to a priest. The priest in bondage to a
creed.

Then
the priest and his
institution become an integral part and parcel of the State, mixed in
all its
affairs. The success of the State seems to lie in holding belief intact
and
stilling all further questions of the people, transferring all doubts
to this
Volunteer Class which answers for a consideration.

Naturally,
the man who does not
accept the answers is regarded as an enemy of the State  that is, the
enemy of
mankind.

To
keep this questioner down has
been the problem of every religion. And the great problem of progress
has been
to smuggle the newly-discovered truth past Cerberus, the priest, by
preparing a
sop that was to him palatable.

From
every branch of Science the
priest has been routed, save in Sociology alone. Here he has stubbornly
made
his last stand, and is saving himself alive by slowly accepting the
situation
and transforming himself into the Promoter of a Social Club.

he
attempt to ascertain the truths of physical science outside of theology
was, in the early ages, very seldom ventured. When men wanted to know
anything
about anything, they asked the priest.

Questions
that the priest could
not answer he declared were forbidden of man to know; and when men
attempted to
find out for themselves they were looked upon as heretics.

The
early church regarded the
earth as a flat surface with four corners. And in proof of their
position they
quoted Saint Paul, who wanted the gospel carried to the ends of the
earth.

In
fact, the universe was a house.
The upper story was Heaven, the lower story was the Earth, and the
cellar was
Hell. God, the angels and the "saved" lived in Heaven, man lived on
Earth, and the devils and the damned had Hell to themselves.

"And
there shall be no night
there," and this was proven by the stars, which were regarded as
peepholes
through which mortals could catch glimpses of the wondrous light of
Heaven
beyond. Hell was below, as was clearly shown by volcanoes, when the
fierce
fires occasionally forced themselves up through. Darkness to children
is always
terrible, and the night is regarded by them as the time of evil.

Later,
Churchmen came to believe
that the stars were jewels hung in the sky every night by angels whose
business
it was to look after them.

The
word "firmament"
means a solid dome or roof. This firmament, the sky, was supposed to be
the
floor of Heaven. The firmament had four corners and rested on the
mountains, as
the eye could plainly see. When God's car was rolled across the floor
we heard
thunder, and his movements were always accompanied by lightnings,
winds, black
clouds and rain  all this so He could not be too plainly seen.

Heaven
was only a little way off
 a few miles at the most. So there were attempts made at times by bad
men to
reach it. The Greeks had a story about the Aloidζ who piled mountain
upon
mountain; the Bible story of the Tower of Babel is the same, where the
masons
called, "More mort," and those below sent up bricks. There is also an
ancient Mexican legend of giants who built the Pyramid of Cholula, and
they
would have been successful in their attempts if fire had not been
thrown down
upon them from Heaven. In all "Holy Writ" we find accounts of
"ascensions," "translations," "annunciations,"
and mortals caught up into the clouds. Many people had actually seen
angels
ascending and descending.

"Messengers
from on
high" and God's secretaries were constantly coming down on delicate
errands. Everything that man did was noted and written down. We were
watched
all the time by unseen beings. The Bible tells of how the Earth was
eventually
to be destroyed, and then there would be only Heaven and Hell. God, His
Son and
the angels were going to come down, and for ages men watched the
heavens to see
them appear.

All
sensitive children, born of
orthodox Christian parents, who heard the Bible read aloud, looked
fearfully
into the sky for "signs and wonders." The Bible tells in several
places of devils breaking out of Hell and roaming over the earth. Dante
fully
believed in this three-story-house idea, and pictures with awful
exactness the
details, which he gained from the preaching of the priests. Dante was
never
honored by having his books placed on the "Index." On the contrary,
he got his vogue largely through the recommendation of the priests. To
them he
was a true scientist, for he corroborated their statements.

The
Christian Fathers ridiculed
the idea of the earth being round, because, if this were so, how could
the
people on the other side see the Son of Man when He came in the sky?
Besides
that, if the earth were round and turned on its axis, we would all fall
off
into space.

The
idea that there was an ocean
above the earth, in the heavens, was brought forward to show the
goodness and
wisdom of God. Without this there would be no rain and hence no
vegetation, and
man would soon perish. In Genesis we read that God said, "Let there be
a
firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from
the
waters," And in Psalms, "Praise Him, ye heavens of heavens and ye
waters that be above the heavens." Then we hear, "The windows of
Heaven were opened." So this thought of the waters above the earth was
fully proved, accepted and fixed, and to pray for rain was quite a
natural
thing.

The
English Prayer-Book contained
such prayers up to within a very few years ago, and in Eighteen Hundred
Eighty-three the Governor of Kansas set apart a day upon which the
people were
to pray that God would open the windows of Heaven and send them rain.
They also
prayed to be delivered from grasshoppers, just as in Queen Elizabeth's
time the
Prayer-Book had this, "From the Turk and the Comet, good Lord deliver
us."

In
the Sixth Century, Cosmos, one
of the Saints, wrote a complete explanation of the phenomena of the
heavens. To
account for the movement of the sun, he said God had His angels push it
across
the firmament and put it behind a mountain each night, and the next
morning it
was brought out on the other side. He met every objection by citations
from
Job, Genesis, Ezekiel, Ecclesiastes and the New Testament, and wound up
with an
anathema upon any or all who doubted or questioned in this matter of
astronomy.

The
whole Christian idea of the
Universe was simple, plain and plausible. The child-mind could easily
accept
it, and when backed up by the Holy Book, written at God's dictation,
word for
word, infallible and absolutely true in every part, one does not wonder
that
progress was practically blocked for fourteen hundred years, but the
real
miracle is that it was not blocked forever.

housands
of years before Christ, the Chinese had mapped the heavens and
knew the movements of the planets so well that they correctly
prophesied the
positions of the various constellations many years in advance.
Twenty-five
hundred years before our Christian era a Chinese Governor put to death
the
astronomers Hi and Ho because they had failed to foretell an eclipse,
quite
according to the excellent Celestial plan of killing the doctor when
the
patient dies.

Sir
William Hamilton points out
the fact that the Chinese, five thousand years ago, knew astronomy as
well as
we do, and that Christian astrology grew out of Chinese astronomy, in
an effort
to foretell the fortunes of men.

Fear
wants to know the future,
and astrology and priesthood are synonymous terms, since the business
of the
priest has always been to prophesy, a profession he has not yet
discarded.
Their prophecies are at present innocuous and lightly heeded. They
preach that
perfect faith will move a mountain, but energetic railroad-builders of
today
find it quicker and cheaper to tunnel.

certain
type
of man accepts a certain theory.

The
Christian view of creation
was practically the conception of the Greeks before Thales. This wise
man, in
the Sixth Century before Christ, taught that the earth was round, and
that
certain stars were also worlds. He showed that the earth was round and
proved
it by the disappearance of the ship as it sailed away. He located the
earth,
moon and sun so perfectly that he prophesied an eclipse, and when it
took place
it so terrified the Medes and the Lydians, who were in battle with each
other,
that they threw down their arms and made peace. Thales had explained
that Atlas
carried the world on his shoulder, but he didn't explain what Atlas
stood upon.

Pythagoras,
one of the pupils of
Thales, following the idea still further, showed that the moon derived
its
light from the sun; that the earth was a globe and turned daily on its
axis.

He
held that the sun was the
center of the universe and that the planets revolved around it.
Anaxagoras
followed a few years later than Pythagoras, and became convinced that
the sun
was merely a ball of fire and therefore should not be worshiped; that
it
follows a natural law, that nothing ever happens by chance, and that to
pray
for rain is absurd.

For
his honesty in expressing what
he thought was truth, the priests of Athens had Anaxagoras and his
family
exiled to perpetual banishment from Athens and all of his books were
burned.

Plato
touched on Astronomy, for
he touches on everything, and fully believed that the earth was round.

His
pupil, Aristotle, taught all
that Anaxagoras taught, and if he also had not been exiled, but had
been free
to study, investigate and express himself, he would have come very
close to the
truth.

Hipparchus,
a hundred years after
Aristotle, calculated the length of the year to within six minutes,
discovered
the precession of equinoxes and counted all the stars he could see,
making a
map of them.

Seventy
years after Christ,
Ptolemy, a Greco-Egyptian, but not of the royal line of Ptolemies,
published
his great book, "The Almagest." For over fourteen centuries it was
the textbook for the best astronomers.

It
taught that the earth was the
center of the universe, and that the sun and the planets revolve around
it.
There were many absurdities, however, that had to be explained, and the
priests
practically rejected the whole book as "pagan" and taught an
astronomy of their own, founded entirely upon the Bible. They wanted an
explanation that would be accepted by the common people.

This
astronomy was not designed to
be very scientific, exact or truthful  all they asked was, "Is it
plausible?" Expediency, to theology, has always been much more
important
than truth.

"Besides,"
said Saint
Basil, "what boots it concerning all this conjecture about the stars,
since the earth is soon to come to an end, as is shown by our Holy
Scriptures,
and man's business is to prepare his soul for eternity?"

This
was the general attitude of
the Church  exact truth was a matter of indifference. And if Science
tended to
unseat men's faith in the Bible, and in God's most holy religion, then
so much
the worse for Science.

It
will thus plainly be seen why
the Church felt compelled to fight Science  the very life of the
Church was at
stake.

The
Church was the vital thing  not
truth. If truth could be taught without unseating faith, why, all
right, but
anything that made men doubt must be rooted out at any cost. And that
is why
priests have opposed Science, not that they hate Science less, but that
they
love the Church more.

From
the time of Ptolemy to that
of Copernicus  fourteen hundred years  theology practically dictated
the
learning of the world. And to Copernicus must be given the credit of
having
really awakened the science of astronomy from her long and peaceful
sleep.

he
little land that we know as Poland has produced some of the finest
and most acute intellects the world has ever known.

Tragic
and blood-stained is her
history, and this tragedy, perhaps, has been a prime factor in the
evolution of
her men of worth. Poland has been stamped upon and pushed apart; and a
persecuted people produce a pride of race that has its outcrop in
occasional
genius.

Recently
we heard of the great
Paderewski playing before the Czar, and His Majesty, in a speech meant
to be
very complimentary, congratulated the company that so great a genius as
he was
a citizen of Russia.

"Your
Majesty, I am not a
Russian  I am a Pole!" was the proud reply.

The
Czar replied, smiling,
"There is no such country as Poland  now there is only Russia!"

And
Paderewski replied,
"Pardon my hasty remark  you speak but truth." And then he played
Chopin's "Funeral March," a dirge not only to the great men of Poland
gone, but to Poland herself.

Nicholas
Copernicus was born at
the quaint old town of Thorn, in Poland, February Nineteen, Fourteen
Hundred
Seventy-three. The family name was Koppernigk, but Nicholas latinized
it when
he became of age, and seemingly separated from his immediate kinsmen
forever.

His
father was a merchant, fairly
prosperous, and only in the line of money-making was he ambitious. In
the
Koppernigks ran a goodly strain of Jewish blood, but a generation
before,
pressure and expediency seemed to combine, so that the family, as we
first see
them, were Christians. No soil can grow genius, no seed can produce it
 it
springs into being in spite of all laws and rules and regulations. "No
hovel is safe from it," says Whistler.

The
portraits of Copernicus
reveal a man of most marked personality: proud, handsome,
self-contained,
intellectual. The head is massive, eyes full, luminous, wide apart, his
nose
large and bold, chin strong, the mouth alone revealing a trace of the
feminine,
as though the man were the child of his mother. This mother had a
brother who
was a bishop, and the mother's ambition for her boy was that he should
eventually follow in the footsteps of this illustrious brother who was
known
for a hundred miles as a preacher of marked ability.

So
we hear of the young man being
sent to the University of Cracow, as the preliminary to a great career.

The
father bitterly opposed the
idea of taking his son out of the practical world of business, and this
evidently led to the breach that caused young Nicholas to discard the
family
name.

That
Nicholas did not fully enter
into his mother's plans is shown that while at Cracow he devoted
himself mostly
to medicine. He was so proficient in this that he secured a physician's
degree;
and having been given leave to practise he revealed his humanity by
declining
to do so, turning to mathematics with a fine frenzy.

This
disposition to drop on a
thing, turn loose on it, concentrate, and reduce it to a chaos, is the
true
distinguishing mark of genius. The difference in men does not lie in
the size
of their heads, nor in the perfection of their bodies, but in this one
sublime
ability of concentration  to throw the weight with the blow, live an
eternity
in an hour  "This one thing I do!"

Copernicus
at twenty-one was
teaching mathematics at Cracow, and by his extraordinary ability in
this one
direction had attracted the attention of various learned men. In fact
the
authorities of the college had grown a bit boastful of their star
student, and
when visiting dignitaries arrived, young Copernicus was given chalk and
blackboard and put through his paces. Problems involving a dozen
figures and
many fractions were worked out by him with a directness and precision
that made
him the wonder of that particular part of the world.

The
science of trigonometry was
invented by Copernicus, and we see that early in his twenties he was
well on
the heels of it, for he had then arranged a quadrant to measure the
height of
standing trees, steeples, buildings or mountains. For rest and
recreation he
painted pictures.

A
college professor from Bologna
traveling through Cracow met Copernicus, and greatly impressed with his
powers,
invited him to return with him to Bologna and there give a course of
lectures
on mathematics.

Copernicus
accepted, and at
Bologna met the astronomer, Novarra. This meeting was the turning-point
of his
life. Copernicus was then twenty-three years of age, but in intellect
he was a
man. He had vowed a year before that he would indulge in no trivial
conversation about persons or things  only the great and noble themes
should
interest him and occupy his attention.

With
commonplace or ignorant
people he held no converse. He had remarkable beauty of person and
great
dignity, and his presence at Bologna won immediate respect for him.

Men
accept other men at the
estimate they place upon themselves.

In
listening to lectures by
Novarra, he perceived at once how mathematics could be made valuable in
calculating the movement of stars.

Novarra
taught the Ptolemaic
theory of astronomy for the esoteric few. The Church is made up of men,
and
while priests for the most part are quite content to believe what the
Church
teaches, yet it has ever been recognized that there was one doctrine
for the
Few, and another for the Many  the esoteric and the exoteric. The
esoteric is
an edged tool, and only a very few are fit to handle it. The charge of
heresy
is only for those who are so foolish as to give out these edged tools
to the
people. You may talk about anything you want, provided you do not do
it; and
you may do anything you want, provided you do not talk about it.

The
proposition that the earth
was flat, had four corners, and the stars were jewels hung in the sky
as
"signs," and were moved about by angels, was all right for the many,
but now and then there were priests who were not content with these
child-stories  they wanted truth  and these usually accepted the
theories of
Ptolemy.

Novarra
believed that the earth
was a globe; that this globe was the center of the universe, and that
around
the earth the sun, moon and certain stars revolved. The fixed stars he
still
regarded as being hung against the firmament, and that this firmament
was
turned in some mysterious way, en masse.

Copernicus
listened silently, but
his heart beat fast. He had found something upon which he could
exercise his
mathematics. He and Novarra sat up all night in the belfry of the
cathedral and
watched the stars.

They
saw that they moved
steadily, surely and without caprice. It was all natural, and could be
reduced,
Copernicus thought, to a mathematical system.

Astrology
and astronomy were not
then divorced. It was astrology that gave us astronomy. The angel that
watched
over a star looked after all persons who were born under that star's
influence,
or else appointed some other angel for the purpose. Every person had a
guardian
angel to protect him from the evil spirits that occasionally broke out
of Hell
and came up to earth to tempt men.

Mathematics
knows nothing of
angels  it only knows what it can prove. Copernicus believed that, if
certain
stars did move, they moved by some unalterable law of their own. In
riding on a
boat he observed that the shores seemed to be moving past, and he
concluded
that a part, at least, of the seeming movements of planets might
possibly be
caused by the moving of the earth.

In
talking with astrologers he
perceived that very seldom did they know anything of mathematics. And
this
ignorance on their part caused him to doubt them entirely.

His
faith was in mathematics  the
thing that could be proved  and he came to the conclusion that
astronomy and
mathematics were one thing, and astrology and child-stories another.

He
remained at Bologna just long
enough to turn the astrologers out of the society of astronomers.

Novarra's
lectures on astronomy
were given in Latin, and in truth all learning was locked up in this
tongue.
But astrology and the theological fairy-tales of the people floated
free. They
were a part of the vagrant hagiology of the roadside preachers, who
with lurid
imaginations said the things they thought would help carry conviction
home and
make "believers."

From
Bologna Copernicus then
moved on to Padua, where he remained two years, teaching and giving
lectures.
Here he devoted considerable time to chemistry, and on leaving he was
honored
by being given a degree by the University. Next we find him at Rome, a
professor in mathematics and also giving lectures on chemistry. His
lectures
were not for the populace  they were for the learned few. But they
attracted
the attention of the best, and were commented upon and quoted by the
various
other teachers, preachers and lecturers. A daring thinker who expresses
himself
without reservation states the things that various others know and
would like
to state if they dared. It is often very convenient when you want a
thing said
to enclose the matter in quotation-marks. It relieves one from the
responsibility
of standing sponsor for it, if the hypothesis does not prove popular.

Copernicus
was only nineteen
years old when Columbus discovered America, but it seems he did not
hear of
Columbus until he reached Bologna in Fourteen Hundred Ninety-five. At
Rome he made
various references to Columbus in his lectures; dwelt upon the truth
that the
earth was a globe; mentioned the obvious fact that in sailing westward
Columbus
did not sail his ship over the edge of the earth into Hell, as had been
prophesied he would.

He
also explained that the red
sky at sunset was not caused by the reflections from Hell, nor was the
sun
moved behind a mountain by giant angels at night. Copernicus was a
Catholic, as
all teachers were, but he had been deceived by the esoteric and the
exoteric,
and had really thought that the priests and so-called educated men
actually
desired, for themselves, to know the truth.

At
Padua he had learned to read
Greek, and had become more or less familiar with Pythagoras,
Hipparchus,
Aristotle and Plato. He quoted these authors and showed how in some
ways they
were beyond the present. This was all done in the exuberance of youth,
with
never a doubt as to the value and the beauty of the Church. But he was
thinking
more of truth than of the Church, and when a cardinal from the Vatican
came to
him, and in all kindness cautioned him, and in love explained it was
all right
for a man to believe what he wished, but to teach others things that
were not
authorized was a mistake.

Copernicus
was abashed and
depressed.

He
saw then that his lectures had
really been for himself  he was endeavoring to make things plain to
Copernicus, and the welfare of the Church had been forgotten.

He
ceased lecturing for a time,
but private pupils came to him, and among them astrologers in disguise,
and
these went away and told broadcast that Copernicus was teaching that
the
movements of the stars were not caused by angels, and that "God was
being
dethroned by a tape-measure and a yardstick." Alchemy had a strong hold
upon the popular mind, and these alchemists and astrologers were
fortune-tellers and derived a goodly income from the people.

They
had their stands in front of
all churches and turned in a goodly tithe "for the benefit of the
poor."

When
the astrologers attacked
Copernicus he tried to explain that the heavens were under the reign of
natural
law, and that so far as he knew there was no direct relationship
between the
stars and the men upon earth. The answer was, "You yourself foretell
the
eclipse, and assume to know when a star will be in a certain place a
hundred
years in advance; now, if you can prophesy about stars, why can't we
foretell a
man's future?"

Copernicus
proudly declined to
answer such ignorance, but went on to say that alchemy was a violence
to
chemistry as much as astrology was to astronomy. In chemistry there
were exact
results that could be computed by mathematics and foretold; it was
likewise so
in astronomy.

Copernicus
was philosopher enough
to know that astrology led to astronomy, and alchemy led to chemistry,
but he
said all he wished to do was to eliminate error and find the truth, and
when we
have ascertained the laws of God in reference to these things, we
should
discard the use of black cats, goggles, peaked hats, red fire and
incantations
 these things were sacrilege. And the enemy declared that Copernicus
was
guilty of heresy in saying they were guilty of sacrilege. Moreover,
black cats
were not as bad as blackboards.

The
Pope certainly had no idea of
treating Copernicus harshly; in fact, he greatly admired him  but
peace was
the thing desired. Copernicus was creating a schism, and there was
danger that
the revenues would be affected. The Pope sent for Copernicus, received
him with
great honor, blessed him, and suggested that he return at once to his
native
town of Thorn and there await good news that would come to him soon.

Copernicus
was overwhelmed with
gratitude  he was in difficulties.

Certain
priests had publicly
denounced him; others had urged him on to unseemliness in debate; he
had stated
things he could not prove, even though he knew they were true  but the
Pope
was his friend! He loved the Church; he felt how necessary it was to
the
people, and at the last, the desire of his heart was to bless and
benefit the
world.

He
fell on his knees and attempted
to kiss the Pope's foot, but the Holy Father offered him his hand
instead,
smiled on him, stroked his head, and an attendant was ordered to place
about
his neck a chain of gold with a crucifix that would protect him from
all harm.
A purse was placed in his hand, and he was sent upon his way relieved,
happy  wondering,
wondering!

hen
Copernicus reached his native town of Thorn, the local clergy turned
out in a procession to greet him, and a solemn service of thanksgiving
was held
for his safe return home.

Copernicus
was only twenty-seven
years of age, and what he had done was not quite clear to his uncle,
the
bishop, and the other dignitaries, but word had come from the secretary
of the
Pope that he should be honored, and it was all so done, in faith, love
and
enthusiasm.

Very
shortly after this
Copernicus was made Canon of the Cathedral at Frauenburg. The town of
Frauenburg has now only about twenty-five hundred people, and it
certainly was
no larger then. The place is slow, sleepy, and quite off the beaten
track of
travel.

When
Canon Copernicus preached
now, it was to a dear, stupid lot of old marketwomen and overworked men
and
mischievous children. Oratory is a collaboration  let him wax eloquent
about
the precession of the equinoxes, and prate of Plato and Pythagoras if
he wished
 no one could understand him! Rome is wise  the crystallized
experience of
centuries is hers. Responsibility tames a man  marriage, political
office,
churchly preferment  read history and note how these things have
dulled the
bright blade of revolution and turned the radical into a Presbyterian
professor
at Princeton, a staunch upholder of the Established Order!

Plato
said that Solar Energy
found one of its forms of expression in man. Some men are much more
highly charged
with it than others; your genius is a man who does things. Do not think
to dam
up the red current of his life  he may die.

Copernicus
set to work practising
medicine, and gave his services gratis to the poor, who came for many
miles to
consult him.

He
went from house to house and
ordered his people to clean up their back yards, to ventilate their
houses, to
bathe and be decent and orderly. He devised a system of sewerage, and
utilized
the belfry of his church as a water-tower so as to get a water pressure
from
the little stream that ran near the town. The remains of this invention
are to
be seen there in the church-steeple even unto this day.

King
Sigismund of Poland had
heard of the attacks made by Copernicus upon the alchemists, and sent
for him
that he might profit by his advice, for it seems that the King, too,
had been
having experience with alchemists. In their seeking after a way to make
gold
out of the baser metals they had actually succeeded. At least they said
so, and
had made the King believe it.

They
had shown the King how he
could cheapen his coinage one-half, and "it was just as good!" The
King could not tell the difference when the coins were new, but alas!
when they
went beyond the borders of Poland they could only be passed at one-half
their
face-value; travelers refused to accept them; and even the merchants at
home
were getting afraid.

Copernicus
analyzed some of this
money made for the King by his alchemist friends and found a large
alloy of
tin, copper and zinc. He explained to the King that by mixing the
metals they
did not change their nature nor value. Gold was gold, and copper was
copper  God
had made these things and hid them in the earth and men might deceive
some men
 a part of the time  but there was always a retribution. Debase your
currency, and soon it will cease to pass current. No law can long
uphold a
fictitious value.

The
King urged Copernicus to
write a book on the subject of coinage.

The
permission of the Pope was
secured, and the book written. The work is valuable yet, and reveals a
deep
insight into the heart of things. The man knew political economy, and
foretold
that a people who debased their currency debased themselves.

"Money
is character,"
he said, "and if you pretend it is one thing, and it turns out to be
another,
you lose your reputation and your own self-respect. No government can
afford to
deceive the governed. If the people lose confidence in their rulers, a
new
government will spring into being, built upon the ruins of the old.
Government
and commerce are built on confidence."

Then
he went on to show that
German gold was valuable everywhere, because it was pure; but Polish
gold and
Russian gold were below par, because the money had been tampered with,
and as
no secrets could be kept long, the result was the matter exactly
equalized
itself, save that Russians and Polanders had in a large degree lost
their
characters through belief in miracles. Copernicus advocated a universal
coinage, to be adopted by all civilized nations, and the amount of
alloy should
be known and plainly stated, and this alloy should simply be the
seigniorage,
or what was taken out to cover the cost of mintage.

King
Sigismund circulated this
valuable book by Copernicus among all the courts of Europe, and it need
not be
stated that the suggestions made by Copernicus have been adopted by
civilized
nations everywhere.

he
humdrum duties of a country clergyman did not still the intense
longing of Copernicus to know and understand the truth. He visited the
sick,
closed the eyes of the dying, kept his parish register, but his heart
was in
mathematics, and so there is shown at Thorn an old church register kept
by
Copernicus, where, in the back, are great rows of figures put down by
the
Master as he worked at some astronomical problem. In the upper floor of
the
barn, back of the old dilapidated farmhouse where he lived for forty
years, he
cut holes in the roof, and also apertures in the sides of the building,
through
which he watched the movements of the stars. He lived in practical
isolation
and exile, for the Church had forbidden him to speak in public except
upon
themes that the Holy Fathers in their wisdom had authorized. None was
to invite
him to speak, read his writings or hold converse with him, except on
strictly
church matters.

Copernicus
knew the situation  he
was a watched man. For him there was no preferment: he knew too much!
As long
as he kept near home and did his priestly work, all was well; but a
trace of
ambition or heresy, and he would be dealt with. The Universities and
all prominent
Churchmen were secretly ordered to leave Copernicus and his vagaries
severely
alone. But the stars were his companions  they came out for him
nightly and
moved in majesty across the sky. "They do me great honor," he said;
"I am forbidden to converse with great men, but God has ordered for me
a
procession." When the whole town slept, Copernicus watched the heavens,
and made minute records of his observations. He had brought with him
from Rome
copies made by himself from the works of the prominent Greek
astronomers, and
the "Almagest" of Ptolemy he knew by heart.

He
digested all that had been
written on the subject of astronomy; slowly and patiently he tested
every
hypothesis with his rude and improvised instruments. "Surely God will
not
damn me for wanting to know the truth about His glorious works," he
used
to say.

Emerson
once wrote this: "If
the stars came out but once in a thousand years, how men would adore!"
But
before he had written this, Copernicus had said: "To look up at the
sky,
and behold the wondrous works of God, must make a man bow his head and
heart in
silence. I have thought and studied, and worked for years, and I know
so little
 all I can do is to adore when I behold this unfailing regularity,
this
miraculous balance and perfect adaptation. The majesty of it all
humbles me to
the dust."

It
was ostracism and exile that
gave Copernicus the leisure to pursue his studies in quiet, undiverted,
undisturbed. He was relieved from financial pinch, having all he needed
for his
simple, homely wants. The mental distance that separated him from his
parishioners made him free, and the order that he should not travel and
that
none should visit him made him master of his time. There were no
interruptions
 "God has set me apart," he wrote, "that I may study and make
plain His works." But still, that he could not make his discoveries
known
was a constant, bitter disappointment to him.

In
astronomy he found a means of
using his mighty mathematical genius for his own pleasure and
amusement. The
Pope had, in seeking to subdue him, merely supplied the exact
conditions he
required to do his work  yet neither knew it. So mighty is Destiny: we
work
for one thing and fail to get it, but in our efforts we find something
better.

The
simple, hard-working
gardeners with whom Copernicus lived, had a reverent awe for the great
man;
they guessed his worth, but still had suspicions of his sanity. His
nightly
vigils they took for a sort of religious ecstasy, and a wholesome fear
made
them quite willing not to do anything that might disturb him.

So
passed the days away, and from
a light-hearted, ambitious man, Copernicus had grown old and bowed, and
nearly
blind from constant watching of the stars and writing at night.

But
his book, "The
Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies," was at last complete. For forty
years
he had worked at it, and for twenty-seven years, he himself says, not a
day or
a night had passed without his having added something to it.

He
felt that he had in this book
told the truth. If men wanted to know the facts about the heavens they
would
find them here. He had approached the subject with no preconceived
ideas; he
had ever been willing to renounce a theory when he found it wrong. He
knew what
all other great astronomers had taught, and out of them all he had
built a
Science of Astronomy that he knew would stand secure.

But
what should he do with all
this mass of truth he had discovered? It was in his own brain, and it
was in
the three thousand pages of this book, which had been rewritten five
times. In
a few years at most, his brain would be stilled in death; and in five
minutes,
ignorance and malice might reduce the book to ashes, and the forty
years' labor
of Copernicus  working, dreaming, calculating, weeping, praying 
would all go
for naught and be but a tale that is told. Others might have lived such
lives
and known as much as he, and all was lost!

To
send the book frankly to Rome
and ask the Censor for the privilege to publish it, was out of the
question
entirely  the request would be refused, the manuscript destroyed, and
his own
life might be in danger.

To
publish it at home without the
consent of his Bishop would be equally dangerous. There would be a
bonfire of
every copy in the public square; for in this volume, all that the
priests
taught of astronomy had been contradicted and refuted.

And
then it occurred to him to
send the manuscript to the free city of Nuremberg, the home of science,
art and
free speech, where men could print what they thought was truth 
Nuremberg, the
home of Albrecht Durer. With the book he sent a bag of gold, his
savings of a
lifetime, to pay the expense of printing the volume and putting it
before the
world.

To
better protect himself,
Copernicus wrote a preface, dedicating the book to the Pope Paul, thus
throwing
himself upon the mercy of His Holiness. He would not put the work out
anonymously, as his friends in Nuremberg, for his own safety, had
advised. And
neither would he flee to Nuremberg for protection; he would stay at
home  he
was too old to travel now  besides, he had forgotten how to talk and
act with
men of talent.

How
would Rome receive the book?
He could only guess  he could only guess.

The
months went by, and fear,
anxiety and suspense had their sway. He was stricken with fever. In his
delirium he called aloud, "The book  tell me  they surely have not
burned it  you know I wrote no word but truth  oh, how could they
burn my
book!"

But
on May Twenty-third, Fifteen
Hundred Forty-three, a messenger came from Nuremberg.

He
carried a copy of the printed
book  he was admitted to the sick-room, and placed in the hands of the
stricken man the volume. A gleam of sanity came to Copernicus. He
smiled, and
taking the book gazed upon it, stroked its cover as though caressing
it, opened
it and turned the leaves. Then closing the book and holding it to his
heart, he
closed his eyes, and sank to sleep, to awake no more.

His
body was buried with simple
village honors, and laid to rest beneath the floor of the Cathedral
where he
had so long ministered, side by side with a long line of priests. On
the little
slab that marked his resting-place no mention was made of the mighty
work he
had done for truth. There were fears that when the character of his
book was
known, the grave of Copernicus would not remain undisturbed, and so the
inscription on the headstone was simply this: "I ask not the grace
accorded to Paul; not that given to Peter; give me only the favor which
Thou
didst show to the thief on the cross."